Escape
by Kedavra
Summary: Sirius' escape from Azkaban involved more than just transforming and running. Sirius' POV of that night. A visit from an old friend and an ancient spell.


Author's Note: My first attempt at writing a short story and first attempt at writing Sirius. I was rather surprised when this story sort of grew on me and I was completely absorbed when I was writing it. Weird.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and such. JK Rowling (her great magnificanceness who has the ABSOLUTE POOREST TASTE IN WHICH CHARACTER SHE CHOOSES TO KILL) owns it  
  
Escape  
  
By: Kedavra  
  
It is always cold here.  
  
Curious, really, how a warm, balmy breeze can be blowing on the other side of the wall, and yet inside, there is a penetrating, freezing force that turns every human into a frigid wreck. How is it that being chilled from the inside can make one believe that his skin his clammy, his robes are too thin, and the air is bitingly icy?  
  
Fourteen years of that feeling and I stopped pondering the injustice of it, stopped hoping for freedom that would not come. Hell, I stopped after three weeks. Hope does not live long in the presence of dementors. But obsession is a different story.  
  
Obsession, I have found, is sufficient enough to clear the mind in Azkaban. It's sure as hell served me better here than hope. I can push the unhappy memories out of my head with it. I can plan. I can plot. I can sit here on the straw-covered floor and weave a little bowl out of straw.  
  
I assure you that there's a purpose to that.  
  
Out there, Harry is in danger, and I am the only person who knows it. Out there is a boy that needs protecting and a rat that needs killing.  
  
Wormtail. He will suffer a most painful and excruciating death when I find him. But first, I must do the impossible. I must escape from Azkaban.  
  
Being an animagus is helpful, but it will not be enough. I have one chance at this, and it is likely that the dementors will sense a vague being leaving a cell. It would be all too easy for them to follow their senses and recapture. I have to do something to confuse their senses further.  
  
I have been thinking for weeks now, hatching plans that seem wild and crazy beyond reckoning. The one I finally settled on was almost as improbable as the others, not crazy, but painfully dangerous.  
  
When I was younger, my Uncle Alphard died. I remember searching and searching for a way to see him again. He had been more of a father to me than my real one had ever been. I had found a spell. An ancient, potent spell that would summon, for a brief period of time, the spirit of a dead person. A shadow of a soul, enough to confuse the dementors into thinking it was a real person. The potion for the spell was simple, casting the spell was not.  
  
The blood of the summoner. the essence of the soulless. the will of the spirit. rare is the success for the bond is fragile. A break in the will, whether of summoner or spirit, and the soul shall be lost forever.  
  
If all went well the soul would be summoned and it would linger for a few minutes before returning for whence it had come. But if it did not work, the soul would be dead, gone forever. It was a stupid risk to take. And James had told me just that many years ago. I had memorized the incantations already. I had bought the essence of the soulless. I had been ready to attempt a foolish thing, and ironically James had stopped me.  
  
I don't remember much of James, just the times we argued. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that James and I had been like brothers, but I can't recall what that felt like.  
  
I closed my eyes, willing myself to be strong about what I was about to do. Harry needs me. I'm the only one who knows the danger. I will not fail James again. He will want me to do this. He will want me to do this, and he will be willing to take the risk himself.  
  
A swishing of robes outside broke into my attempts to convince myself that I was doing the right thing.  
  
It's time.  
  
A dementor's hand appears through the bars, holding a bowl of food with a stone spoon protruding from it. I shuddered as I took the bowl from it and scarfed down its contents. Gingerly, I wiped the bowl clean with my robes and picked up the straw bowl I had weaved, waiting for the dementor to reach its hand back through.  
  
I watched as the slimy rotten hand extended through the bars again. Shoving the straw bowl into the dementor's hand, I seized the stone spoon and scraped it down the scabby hand.  
  
The dementor hissed angrily and withdrew its hand. It drew a threatening, rattling breath, and I sunk back into my cell apprehensively, desperately fighting to suppress the horrible memories the dementor's anger had surfaced. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it glided away, clutching the crude straw bowl in its hand.  
  
My relief was short-lived. The most dangerous part of the plan was yet to come. I emptied the spoon of the slime it had gleaned of the dementor's hand, smearing it into the bottom of the bowl. Balling my hand into a fist, I swiped my knuckles furiously against the rough stone wall. I held my hand palm up over the bowl, letting a few droplets of blood fall into it.  
  
I grasped the sides of the bowl with both hands, kneeled on the dirty, disgusting floow, and started the mutter the Latin words I had learned in another lifetime.  
  
"Te implor, Doamne, nu ignora aceasta rugaminte. Nici mort, nici al fiintei."  
  
I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating on the image of James' face from the last time we had a fight. It was one of the only images of him I could recall in Azkaban.  
  
"I call on the spirit of James Potter. I call on the spirit of James Potter," I chanted in a whisper so the dementors couldn't hear me. I concentrated on the image of James' face with all my might.  
  
There! There was a connection! I could feel something tugging on my soul. It was as though I was tied by a very thin piece of string to something far away.  
  
"I call on the spirit of James Potter."  
  
It was getting stronger. And I imagined I could hear, from far away, a voice chanting.  
  
"I call on the spirit of James Potter."  
  
I felt like I wasn't kneeling on the floor of a cell in Azkaban anymore. I felt like my very soul had flown away and had alighted on a misty, incorporeal road. I was beckoning someone toward me. I could see his untidy mop of black hair and his round glasses.  
  
"I call on the spirit of James Potter."  
  
"I call on the spirit of James Potter!"  
  
And suddenly the connection was gone.  
  
"NO!" I cried in anguish. I had failed. I had condemned James to an eternity of non-existence. I had been weak and stupid. I felt the tears well up in my eyes. Slowly, I opened my eyes, ready to face the reality of my stupidity.  
  
And standing before me was James Potter. Pearly white and translucent, he looked like a ghost with both feet firmly on the floor. He gave a little smirk and ran his hand through his hair.  
  
"James?" I asked, choked with emotion. He looked just like he had twelve years ago. I stood in a trance, shocked to see the best friend I had loved like a brother, amazed that the only real family I ever had was standing before me, in the most improbable of places. I knelt there, with tears streaming down my face, bewildered with a conflict of happiness flooding through me and simultaneously being leeched out by the dementors.  
  
He regarded my seriously for a moment. Then he leaned forward until his pale lips were by my ear.  
  
"Harry needs you," he whispered.  
  
I snapped out of my reverie. I gave him a curt nod and a sad smile, and then I transformed.  
  
I slid through the bars easily, starved and thin as I was. I bounded down the dark hallway outside my cell. Padfoot could smell the foul stench of the dementors. They were disoriented by the vague sense of a soul in the hallway, but not overly concerned because all the cells were occupied. As far as they could tell, Sirius Black was still in his cell.  
  
I pelted toward the wrought iron gate at the end of the hallway, ignoring the mutterings of sleeping prisoners in the cells around me, avoiding the eerie robed figures of the dementors, concentrating on nothing but the sliver of moonlight that shone through the gate.  
  
I wriggled through the bars, and my paws landed on the rocky shore of the island. Azkaban was somewhere off the east coast I recalled, so if I swam west I should make landfall. I gazed at the heavens and found the North Star. I gauged my direction and dove into the water.  
  
As I swam away a strange thing happened. Memories that I hadn't thought of for years trickled into my mind. At first, it was only bits and pieces. But soon they began to push their way through in greater numbers. And presently my mind was flooded by a deluge of past events that lifted up my spirit, lightened my disposition, and transcended my entire being.  
  
The memories had unleashed the life of someone who was happy and satisfied in life. Someone who had some bad experiences, but had wonderful friends and high prospects, and his whole life ahead of him.  
  
I finally staggered onto shore hours later, collapsing in happy exhaustion on the sand, closing my eyes to dream and hope until dawn came.  
  
A/N: and it's over. Maybe that fic didn't come out quite as good as I wanted but I rather enjoyed writing it. The Latin words are from Becoming part 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Willow is trying to restore Angel's soul. Review please and let me know what you think. Even if you thought it was the most worthless piece of garbage ever, let me know. 


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